Consumer and Patient Engagement

The healthcare industry has undergone a massive transformation over the past few years. As recently as 2012, many healthcare providers operated within an uncoordinated care model fraught with unnecessary duplication of services, prone to error and offered limited visibility into the overall condition of the patient upon discharge.

Only recently has the model begun shifting toward a collaborative care approach whereby the hospital, provider, lab and payer share information about the patient. The goal of this model is to ensure patients, especially the chronically ill, get the right care at the right time, while avoiding unnecessary duplication of services and preventing medical errors. This involves a great deal of data exchange and analytics to provide insight to the continuum of care.

The collaborative care approach is about to give way to the personalized care model, in which healthcare providers factor demographics, history and utilization with personalized health interventions and predictive modeling to improve the well-being of the patient.

In fact, Meaningful Use incentives were created to drive healthcare providers to use electronic health records EHR in a meaningful way. It wasn’t enough to simply launch a patient portal, it actually had to be used by the patient.

So how does a healthcare provider engage consumers and patients in a meaningful way?

By empowering consumers and patients to take charge of their care. From creating tools that facilitate finding a doctor and enrolling in clinical research studies, to searching for symptoms on their smartphones, our Professional Services team has been involved with an expansive array of projects that are designed to engage both consumers and patients.

Here are a few tools you should consider if you’ve not already:

• Find a doctor. ClearDATA has implemented multiple solutions, enabled master data, aggregated data, and advised on governance strategies.
• Research symptoms on their smart phones. ClearDATA has deployed highly interactive syndicated content that allows consumers and patients to instantly find out what to do in case of a medical issue.
• Get involved with clinical research studies. ClearDATA has architected and deployed solutions that centralize studies, integrate them with Institutional Review Boards, and make them accessible in nearly 40 hospitals.
• Attend a class or event. ClearDATA has implemented solutions for healthcare organizations to manage their events, allow consumers and patients to pay for these events online, and even integrate registration with third-party call centers.
• Find a treatment center. ClearDATA has created location databases that integrate with online search tools.
• Get a second opinion. ClearDATA developed the Second Opinion module for the Barrow Neurological Institute, which enables patients and their doctors from all over the world to reach out to Barrow to obtain a second opinion.

Getting started is easier than most healthcare providers imagine. Finding the partner is essential. By leveraging their expertise you can simplify the project, reduce your costs,